According to the requirement of night vision operating range,an active infrared illumination system for shipboard camera is designed. Firstly,the overall structure of the system was given,and the design of night vision illumination system was proposed according to the lowest sensitive illumination of the photoelectric sensor,and the formula was deduced. Then,the parameters affecting night vision operating range were analyzed and set up. Based on this,an infrared LED array with a wavelength of 0.85 μm was proposed as the illumination source. And then,the camera zoom lens does not match the emitting light angle of LED,so the LED array was divided into four groups according to different solutions for real-time control of the focal length of the lens,and thus,the control function of the system was realized by using PIC microcontroller. The experimental results show that the active lighting system is practical and effective,and the target imaging level reaches B level in the specific environment of 200m distance. At the same time,it greatly improves the life of the whole system.